


A Boxful of Kittens

by elletromil



Category: Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015)
Genre: Background Relationship, Crack, Fix-It, Fluff, Gen, Kittens, Light Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-14
Updated: 2015-09-14
Packaged: 2018-04-20 19:33:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,297
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4799636
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elletromil/pseuds/elletromil
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>While he's taking a walk around the manor, after coming back from dealing with Valentine, Merlin finds four kittens and their mother.</p><p>After what he just lived through, he cannot bear living them outside to fend for themselves.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Boxful of Kittens

**Author's Note:**

> This is yet another answer to a prompt  
> "merhartwin prompt? merlin accidentally adopts a litter of kittens?"
> 
> While it ended up being far less crack-y than I thought it would be, I still quite like the story I ended up writing.
> 
> This has not been beta'd so any mistakes here are my own

Even though the world has gone to shit, Merlin takes a walk around the grounds when he makes it back to HQ. He still has his glasses on in case there’s an immediate emergency, but he needs some time just to himself to process everything that has happen.

Time to process the fact he’s lost not only his lover to Valentine’s madness, but his oldest friend because of the same bullet. Time to process that, even though a world of possibilities have just now opened for him and Eggsy, they won’t ever be the same as if Harry had still been alive with them.

It might seemed selfish and it is, but right now it is the issues he knows he has any control on. It might take him a while to come to term with his loss, to grieve for Harry, but it’s something only he can do compared to trying to put the world back in order.

He’s so lost in his own thoughts that he very nearly misses the little meows of distress coming from his right. He rummages through the bushes lining the walls until he finds the cause.

It’s a litter of four kittens that cannot be more than a few weeks old, what is obviously the mother still looking fierce enough even though she doesn’t seem able to stand.

The tabby cat visibly relax at his sight, maybe recognizing him for the man who feeds her scraps when he eats his lunch outside or maybe it’s her injuries getting the best of her.

There is no hesitation on his part when he taps his glasses and calls in the vet to help him carry the cats inside the manor. The woman might be more used to dealing with the Knight’s dogs, but her training did include the care of others animals and Merlin have seen enough death for the day.

The vet is very careful with the mother and her assistant looks over the kittens before following, but since they seem to be in generally good health, Merlin is left to deal with them. The kittens docilely let Merlin scoop them up and he slowly makes his way to his office, knowing he’s been away longer than he really should have.

He carefully places them in an empty box conveniently lying around, after placing one of his spare sweater at the bottom to make sure they’ll be warm enough. He then makes sure the box is in his direct line of sight, before logging on to Kingsman’s servers.

~

He’s been dealing with everything and anything for about three hours, when the vet’s assistant knocks on his door, the tabby cat in his arms.

“She seemed to have lost her eye a while ago, and her left front leg has been badly injured so it’s best if she doesn’t move, but she’s good. It was mostly scratches and exhaustion, the vet isn’t worried. But we think she would rest better with her kittens.”

“Right, of course.” He points towards the box, luckily big enough to accommodate the mother and her litter.

The assistant spare a look to the computer screen and usually any member of Kingsman personnel is the paragon of discretion, but Merlin’s not surprised when the curiosity gets the best of the other man. They can make exception after what happened today.

“Did… Did we heard back from everyone?” It’s curiosity, but it’s also worry that makes the voice shake, a worry shared by everyone at HQ. Merlin might be one of the few who knows every single employee at Kingsman, but there’s still a sense of family uniting everyone. You might not be close to a distant cousin, but you still want him to be alright and safe.

“Not yet.”

“Oh…” the man bites his lower lip, before nodding. “I’ll be back with things like food and bowls.”

Merlin would thank him, but he’s contacted by another handler who finally managed to locate Percival, alive, and he’s a bit busy coordinating his extraction to do so. Once the agent is safely waiting for a plane, Morgause still watching over his feed to make sure everything goes seamlessly, Merlin decides it’s high time for him to take another break.

Any other day, he would have gone looking for something to eat, but today he doesn’t bother leaving his office, knowing there’s nothing he'd be able to stomach right now.

Instead he kneels on the floor in front of the box, a smile tugging at his lips in spite of himself at the sight of the four kittens fast asleep against their mother. The tabby cat has her eye half open, probably still drugged, but she seems content enough. She starts purring louder than a motor when Merlin carefully starts petting her, making sure he avoids any places that seem injured.

“Maybe it’s time we give you a name, what do you think?”

His only answer his the raspy feeling of a tongue licking his hand and he chuckles, taking that for a yes. However, before he can start thinking about a good name for the tabby, someone contacts him, directly through his glasses.

He answers it in a heartbeat when he realises it’s Eggsy, even if he’s confused as to why the boy wants a video call with him right now. Or rather, he’s not really surprised, because Eggsy accepted the thankless task of retrieving Harry’s body at whatever morgue he ended up in and Merlin understands why he wouldn’t want to be entirely alone in that moment.

No what is confusing is that the room he can see through the feed isn’t what he expect from any morgue, no matter the country. It’s too bright for one thing, allowing to see the bed against the wall where someone is hooked to various machine.

“Merlin, I-, I-…” Eggsy seems on the verge of a panic attack and the handler would try to calm him down any other time, but the boy has taken some steps closer, allowing Merlin to see exactly who is unconscious on the hospital bed.

“The bastard,” he curses and he wants to be angry, to be furious, but no one could miss the relief in his voice. He starts laughing hysterically, Eggsy echoing him and the change in angle tells him he must have sat down in the chair he had noticed beside the bed.

Then his view is obscured and Merlin can only guess Eggsy has borrowed his face in his arm against the mattress as he hears his chuckles morph to sobs.

He desperately wishes he could be there to comfort Eggsy, but there are unfortunately miles and miles of distance between them, so he does the only thing he can do.

Tirelessly, he repeats ‘ _he’s alive, boy, he’s alive_ ’ over and over again.

~

A nurse comes into the room some time after Eggsy has calmed down a bit, Merlin still murmuring sweet nonsense in his ear. She explains to him that Harry should make a full recovery, except for the eye they could not save, and that it shouldn’t be long before he wakes up from his drug induced coma, nor should it be long before he’s cleared for travel.

Eggsy thanks her and asks if he can stay, to which the nurse answer with a gentle pat on his shoulder. She might think he is Harry’s son, but Eggsy doesn’t care if it allows him to stay.

Merlin wants to stay on the line with him, but the boy refuses, knowing the older man can only have his plate full at the moment.

“Seriously Merlin, I’ll be fine,” he takes Harry’s closet hand in his, making sure Merlin has a good view of their interlaced fingers, “I promise to call as soon as he wakes up, okay?”

“Okay… Okay fine, but if you need me for anything before this-”

“I’ll call you, yes Merlin.” Eggsy chuckles lightly and Merlin just knows he’s rolling his eyes at him over the miles, but he doesn’t care because the chuckle had been a sound of joy instead of the broken sound of near hysteria of a moment before. “Love ya!”

The call is disconnected just afterwards and he sighs in mock exasperation. To think he already had his hands full with Harry, he doesn’t know how he will deal with Eggsy’s cheekiness on top of that.

The tabby he’s been absent-mindedly petting all the while meows inquiringly and Merlin offers her a light-hearted smile.

“Don’t worry I have not forgotten about you.” He tries thinking of something else than the name that have popped in his head just then, but give up when he only comes up with ridiculous name that doesn’t fit the cat. “What do you think of Harriet? You like that?”

He takes the head-butt against his hand as a yes.

*

Over the next days, he names the kittens too.

For someone that never had to name an animal before, it’s easier than he would have thought, especially after they start exploring his office.

The first he names is the most adventurous and suicidal of the bunch. He has stopped counting the number of time he has to catch the kitten mid-jump from a high desk. He knows cats are supposed to always fall back onto their paws, but the kitten always seem to aim to fall on random stuff lying on the floor that could only land him a trip to the vet.

After the second day, he raises the kitten in his hands so that he can look into his eyes sternly.

“You, you are going to be Lancelot. You've got no survival instinct.” Then he scoop the other kitten that had been perched on the high cabinet, leveling him with a stern look too. “And you, don’t think I haven’t seen you push him, little devil. You’re definitely a Percy.”

The two kittens meows pitifully, but he doesn’t let himself be swayed, just puts them back into the box under Harriet’s care, the cat starting to lick her children all over.

 

The next kitten named is also the most independent of the siblings. The kitten explores its environment by its lonesome, prefering to get away from the two daredevils.

But no matter how independent it is, the kitten still jumps on his desk a few times a day to demand a good petting. Judging by the smug purr erupting every time his hand brushes over the fur, the kitten must think it deserves no less than what it’s currently getting.

“You’re a sweet kitten, Rox.”

The newly named Rox starts licking over his hand as if in agreement to his statement.

 

The last to receive a name is the shyest, the one who never strays far from its mother. While Percy and Lancelot looks a bit like Harriet except for their black paws and longer fur and that Rox could be another cat’s kitten because its fur is entirely black, the last kitten is definitely Harriet’s. Looking at it is like looking at a miniature copy of the tabby, albeit a more easily frightened one.

While its siblings never seem to mind when other people come into the office, this kitten will always go hide with its mother, if it had been outside the box in the first place, which it rarely is.

However, after a week spent in the office with Merlin, he is pleasantly surprised when the little tabby leaves the security of the box to jump on his lap and makes himself comfortable, purring as loudly as its mother.

It becomes a daily occurrence, even when Harriet can start moving again and more often than not elects to sleep on the handler’s lap. The kitten only snuggles close to the bigger tabby, unafraid of falling thanks to Merlin’s large hand making sure it stays in place.

“And you, you’re going to be Gary.” He whispers one afternoon when the kitten has fallen asleep to Merlin’s gentle scratching of his chin. Harriet meows softly in approval, before following her kitten to sleep.

***

It’s two weeks after the naming of Gary, that Eggsy and Harry finally come home to London.

Of course they meet the cats nearly straight away, Harry calling him a little shit for calling the mother Harriet, but he’s still very gentle with her and she must feel a certain affinity with this new one-eyed human, because she doesn’t try to maul him to death when Harry bends down to take her in his arms.

Eggsy pokes fun at him for missing him so much he named a kitten after him, but he’s delighted when, instead of staying hidden under the sweater still in the box, Gary comes out to rub against his legs.

 

After that life more or less goes back to normal, with some changes.

While Merlin keeps his role at Kingsman, Harry takes up Arthur’s mantle, leaving Galahad’s in Eggsy expert hands.

The cats stay in the manor, allowed to roam wherever they please because they’re cats, but Harriet and Gary are never far from Merlin’s office and if they are, it’s because they’ve went to find their human almost-namesakes.

 

It’s a month later, when everyone has gotten used to the cats being a permanent fixture at HQ that there’s a new addition to the feline family.

Even if ‘new’ might not be the right term for it, because there is no mistaking the male cat with long luscious black fur one morning strolling into the manor like he owns the place for anything but the now young cats’ father.

Harry is quick to name it ‘Merlin’ and Eggsy falls down his chair laughing while Merlin, the human one that is, contemplates if murdering his two lovers really is worth the trouble.


End file.
